On inconsistent and paradoxical game design

On inconsistent and paradoxical game design

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Posted by: Amadan.9451

Amadan.9451

that is what i did too actually, but i didn’t play the game normally, i just tried to farm the money since the crystalline dust stack i needed was just too much. that means sometimes i played content just because it was more rewarding that things i liked to do. when i started to collect money for my legendary the world event didn’t give you a guaranteed rare drop, and the world event were always my favorite content (but jormag).
i earned most of the money i needed by playing events in penitent/shelter, i just stopped to do it now because i only need the precursor.
and now i play the game normally, i don’t care anymore of mats, and i gave up on the chance to have a precursor by luck, so since i don’t want to play farm to have my 615 gold for the legend i just sit there and play what i like and if money come ok, if don’t than arenanet can shove the legend and his rng in a dark place where the sun don’t shine

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On inconsistent and paradoxical game design

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Posted by: morrolan.9608

morrolan.9608

But you’ve made gold and you can buy mats. That’s what most people do. Most people don’t farm all the mats they need themselves. They play the game however they want,

What if I want to gather the mats myself because its more rewarding that way? I can’t play it how I want.

Jade Quarry [SoX]
Miranda Zero – Ele / Twitch Zero – Mes / Chargrin Soulboom – Engi
Aliera Zero – Guardian / Reaver Zero – Necro

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Posted by: Vayne.8563

Vayne.8563

But you’ve made gold and you can buy mats. That’s what most people do. Most people don’t farm all the mats they need themselves. They play the game however they want,

What if I want to gather the mats myself because its more rewarding that way? I can’t play it how I want.

Nope, you can’t play how you want. This is the most often misquoted bit of Guild Wars advertising that I wish people would figure out.

Play how you want doesn’t mean I can do every single individual thing in the game exactly the way I want, because that’s not possible. Anet has explained this thing multiple times before the game launched.

In most MMOs the road to top level gear is raiding. Period. End of story. They wanted people to be able to level and attain gear multiple ways, no matter their play style. So you could get gear through karma by doing events. Or WvW. Or just doing dungeons over and over. Or just by doing dailies. That’s what play your own way meant.

It doesn’t mean each and every single item in the game is completely flexible. No one could possibly design an MMO like that.

And in fact you CAN farm it yourself, it’ll just take ages. It’s not impossible, just long and difficult.

However, you can’t expect to do anything you want in a game,. because games have parameters. Including this one.

On inconsistent and paradoxical game design

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Posted by: morrolan.9608

morrolan.9608

But you’ve made gold and you can buy mats. That’s what most people do. Most people don’t farm all the mats they need themselves. They play the game however they want,

What if I want to gather the mats myself because its more rewarding that way? I can’t play it how I want.

Nope, you can’t play how you want. This is the most often misquoted bit of Guild Wars advertising that I wish people would figure out.

I wasn’t quoting arenanet I was quoting you.

Jade Quarry [SoX]
Miranda Zero – Ele / Twitch Zero – Mes / Chargrin Soulboom – Engi
Aliera Zero – Guardian / Reaver Zero – Necro

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Posted by: Astralporing.1957

Astralporing.1957

whoever says that most part of getting a legendary is playing the game normally except for lodestone, i want to know how normally playing you can get 750 pile of crystalline dust to craft bifrost…
because in my normal gameplay i managed to have 100ish and this when loot and farming weren’t nerfed…
after the nerf i had to buy all of it and/or had it from friends

But you’ve made gold and you can buy mats.

Someone still has to farm those mats. And i’d have to farm gold, because if i were just to “play normally”, then the prices would rise faster still, and i’d be always behind. And if you nerf the farming spots, then you’d get the current Crystalline Dust problem, where the supply is nowhere close to the demand.

In most MMOs the road to top level gear is raiding. Period. End of story. They wanted people to be able to level and attain gear multiple ways, no matter their play style. So you could get gear through karma by doing events. Or WvW. Or just doing dungeons over and over. Or just by doing dailies. That’s what play your own way meant.

Except they abandoned that approach when they introduced ascended. Karma and crafting would not get you those. No amount of dailies or guild missions or WvW would get you an ascended backpack. No amount of dungeon running will get you even one piece of ascended eq… unless it’s Fractals (and even then, no earrings or amulets for you). face it, it’s no longer the “play your own way within the framework we provided”. It’s “play this content, and this one, ooh, and this one. And do not even try to skip on anything, we can’t have that.”. I’m still waiting for WvW-only ascended pieces. Or some that will be locked to some new niche gameplay.

Actions, not words.
Remember, remember, 15th of November

(edited by Astralporing.1957)

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Posted by: Varakkys.2490

Varakkys.2490

But you’ve made gold and you can buy mats. That’s what most people do. Most people don’t farm all the mats they need themselves. They play the game however they want,

What if I want to gather the mats myself because its more rewarding that way? I can’t play it how I want.

Actually you can play it how you want. It’s just going to take you longer.

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Posted by: Draknar.5748

Draknar.5748

whoever says that most part of getting a legendary is playing the game normally except for lodestone, i want to know how normally playing you can get 750 pile of crystalline dust to craft bifrost…
because in my normal gameplay i managed to have 100ish and this when loot and farming weren’t nerfed…
after the nerf i had to buy all of it and/or had it from friends

But you’ve made gold and you can buy mats.

Someone still has to farm those mats. And i’d have to farm gold, because if i were just to “play normally”, then the prices would rise faster still, and i’d be always behind. And if you nerf the farming spots, then you’d get the current Crystalline Dust problem, where the supply is nowhere close to the demand.

In most MMOs the road to top level gear is raiding. Period. End of story. They wanted people to be able to level and attain gear multiple ways, no matter their play style. So you could get gear through karma by doing events. Or WvW. Or just doing dungeons over and over. Or just by doing dailies. That’s what play your own way meant.

Except they abandoned that approach when they introduced ascended. Karma and crafting would not get you those. No amount of dailies or guild missions or WvW would get you an ascended backpack. No amount of dungeon running will get you even one piece of ascended eq… unless it’s Fractals (and even then, no earrings or amulets for you). face it, it’s no longer the “play your own way within the framework we provided”. It’s “play this content, and this one, ooh, and this one. And do not even try to skip on anything, we can’t have that.”. I’m still waiting for WvW-only ascended pieces. Or some that will be locked to some new niche gameplay.

That’s just the way it is now. They staged ascended item releases. I guarantee in the future you will be able to get an ascended back piece without Fractals (you can anyway with the Sclerite backpack).

But I don’t see how this is any different than any other MMO. I’ve played them all, and I can tell you that best attainable gear for a casual player and best attainable gear for a hardcore gamer are always different. If you want to play casually you can get full exotics and most ascended accessory items. If you want full ascended accessory items then you have to do more specific content, it’s that simple. Casual gamers are going to miss out on the ~5% stat increase that the one or two ascended pieces they currently can’t get gives you.

In WoW if you want the BiS, you will have to raid. That’s it. If you weren’t hardcore enough to raid, or don’t like group content, then too bad. In Aion if you didn’t like to do PVP and/or your side was constantly losing, then you will NOT get the BiS gear and not only that it rewards those that are better geared while punishing less geared.

I don’t get what the problem is. It’s like you people want everything as fast as possible as easy as possible or else the game is broken…

Anet wants people to take years to get legendaries, not months! That much is obvious with the mat requirements. You want it now you farm for it else save your money and you can acquire mats over time. Either way no complaining is necessary.

I won’t stop because I can’t stop.

It’s a medical condition, they say its terminal….

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Posted by: Saelune.5316

Saelune.5316

Yes there is farming, will always be. But there is a difference between having to farm to enjoy the game, and people farming cause they want something specific. I get tired of farming fast, so I usually dont, and dont have much of a problem. Would you have to farm to get a legendary? Almost definatly. Do you NEED a legendary to enjoy the game? No. I think people think there is a farming issue, cause they try to farm, but its people putting themselves into these issues. As for southsun…you dont need those skins. Anyone farming in this game is doing it by choice.

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Posted by: tigirius.9014

tigirius.9014

Playing 1 day a week for 10 hours and playing 5 days a week for 2 hours should yield the same reward.

No, it shouldn’t. And it doesn’t in any MMO I know of.

Yes, it should, and it does in most good games. If other mmos don’t do it it just means that they’re also wrong.

That’s the problem. Other mmo’s don’t do that to their players. There are ways of getting what the players need in those other titles. Not here.

It’s all fine that they don’t want farmers in their game, that’s not the problem.

The overall problem is there’s no other way of getting what people need when they try to get the runes/sigils for their gear or they are working towards their legendary.

They literally have no rewards systems in this game.

~The boxes from Orr are a complete joke, if they do drop something it’s almost never one of those really expensive items to sell for gold.
~ The bags from the laurel vendor hardly drop a thing occassionally they drop something expensive but it’s never the items people need from my experience I’ve never seen lodestones or anything of that nature drop from these things and then we have the cost to consider because there’s no achievement retro for laurels.
~ The rewards system for doing what they expect us to do puzzles, map completion, miniboss fights are so messed up with RNG some people can’t even get anything beyond the daily rare they issued to try to placate people.
~ Then the only method they had for people to collect the mats is nerfed to the ground. This is the problem some of us were trying to show you all when they increased the number of these bags in the first place. There’s a two tier RNG with this system and it was bad anyways. There was RNG to get the bags the drop and then there were RNG when you opened them. Bad Bad design.

I personally am wondering what they’ll do when Wildstar releases and since NCsoft is only a partner in that title and doesn’t have final say what these guys will do when that title doesn’t limit the acquisition of wealth, because if they don’t I can totally see Tyria becoming even more of a ghost town then it is now. It’s happened in every other mmo, adaptation or die.

Balance Team: Please Fix Mine Toolbelt Positioning!

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Posted by: tigirius.9014

tigirius.9014

Yes there is farming, will always be. But there is a difference between having to farm to enjoy the game, and people farming cause they want something specific. I get tired of farming fast, so I usually dont, and dont have much of a problem. Would you have to farm to get a legendary? Almost definatly. Do you NEED a legendary to enjoy the game? No. I think people think there is a farming issue, cause they try to farm, but its people putting themselves into these issues. As for southsun…you dont need those skins. Anyone farming in this game is doing it by choice.

Sure, do you need gear to enjoy the game? No. One could always just login and look at the weather patterns and the water.

There’s an issue getting even enough gold to buy the things you need especially since the combat builds are so out of wack due to their “balance” patches up to this point making every other build useless in PVE so everyone’s a zerker and there are no other means of getting the materials for runes and sigils even if you do get to max level in crafting it then becomes useless to have a 400 score because you can’t get the stones to make the runes yourself without a miracle.

Balance Team: Please Fix Mine Toolbelt Positioning!

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Posted by: Causic.3798

Causic.3798

Why spaz out over legendaries?
They have the same stats are other weapons. And there are other alternative weapons that seem as if they should be legendary but aren’t (especially since some of the legendary weapons are not very nice looking).
For example Jormag’s Breath is (imo) much better looking than bolt, and much cheaper too. Same thing with the Vocanus being very nice as well.

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Posted by: Erasculio.2914

Erasculio.2914

Sorry, 100% map exploration and lots of other time spent in this game, and farming is actually more enjoyable than the vapid PvE content currently on offer in this game.

And that is your fault. Farmers don’t help the economy – it’s not a matter only of supply and demand, but also a matter of concentrating wealth in the hands of a minority, together will all the impact from people who don’t really want to play the game, just exploit the game.

But the worst aspect of farmers is how they are responsible for making MMOs mediocre. ArenaNet wants people to play the game; if no one played it because PvE is bad, ArenaNet would have to either improve the game or sink. But in reality they don’t have to – they know they don’t need to actually bother making good content because there is a horde of players willing to mindlessly farm through bad content just to get a shiny reward in the end, and thus ArenaNet knows that having only “vapid PvE content” is fine as long as they slap it with 200% Magic Find.

“I think that players are starting to mature past the point of wanting to be on that
treadmill, of being in that obvious pattern of every time I catch up you are going to
put another carrot in front of me” – Mike O’Brien right before Ascended weapons

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Posted by: Guns and Giblets.9308

Guns and Giblets.9308

And that is your fault. Farmers don’t help the economy – it’s not a matter only of supply and demand, but also a matter of concentrating wealth in the hands of a minority, together will all the impact from people who don’t really want to play the game, just exploit the game.

But the worst aspect of farmers is how they are responsible for making MMOs mediocre. ArenaNet wants people to play the game; if no one played it because PvE is bad, ArenaNet would have to either improve the game or sink. But in reality they don’t have to – they know they don’t need to actually bother making good content because there is a horde of players willing to mindlessly farm through bad content just to get a shiny reward in the end, and thus ArenaNet knows that having only “vapid PvE content” is fine as long as they slap it with 200% Magic Find.

I see your point—it’s an excellent one—and I have changed my mind accordingly. I appreciate you helping me to see the bigger picture.

“A soft answer turns away wrath,
but a harsh word stirs up anger.” -Jewish Proverb

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Posted by: Marxo.3829

Marxo.3829

I’m going to put this really simply.

Other games: you literally have to grind to see new content or else your gear is not powerful enough to do the content.

GW2: Zero, none, nada need to grind to see all content in the game. Nearly max stat gear is extremely easy to get.

Distorting logic that somehow you must grind because the appearance of your gear isn’t the sparkliest of them all is just a bad argument.

(edited by Marxo.3829)

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Posted by: Vayne.8563

Vayne.8563

whoever says that most part of getting a legendary is playing the game normally except for lodestone, i want to know how normally playing you can get 750 pile of crystalline dust to craft bifrost…
because in my normal gameplay i managed to have 100ish and this when loot and farming weren’t nerfed…
after the nerf i had to buy all of it and/or had it from friends

But you’ve made gold and you can buy mats.

Someone still has to farm those mats. And i’d have to farm gold, because if i were just to “play normally”, then the prices would rise faster still, and i’d be always behind. And if you nerf the farming spots, then you’d get the current Crystalline Dust problem, where the supply is nowhere close to the demand.

In most MMOs the road to top level gear is raiding. Period. End of story. They wanted people to be able to level and attain gear multiple ways, no matter their play style. So you could get gear through karma by doing events. Or WvW. Or just doing dungeons over and over. Or just by doing dailies. That’s what play your own way meant.

Except they abandoned that approach when they introduced ascended. Karma and crafting would not get you those. No amount of dailies or guild missions or WvW would get you an ascended backpack. No amount of dungeon running will get you even one piece of ascended eq… unless it’s Fractals (and even then, no earrings or amulets for you). face it, it’s no longer the “play your own way within the framework we provided”. It’s “play this content, and this one, ooh, and this one. And do not even try to skip on anything, we can’t have that.”. I’m still waiting for WvW-only ascended pieces. Or some that will be locked to some new niche gameplay.

They didn’t abandon anything. it’s STILL different from other games. You’re not locked out of doing content by not having specific ascended gear. You can do it all with exotics without any problem at all. The only exception being the fractals and that’s self-sustaining since the stuff you need to higher level fractals actually drops in the fractals.

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Posted by: Draknar.5748

Draknar.5748

I’m going to put this really simply.

Other games: you literally have to grind to see new content or else your gear is not powerful enough to do the content.

GW2: Zero, none, nada need to grind to see all content in the game. Nearly max stat game is extremely easy to get.

Distorting logic that somehow you must grind because the appearance of your gear isn’t the sparkliest of them all is just a bad argument.

Yep, but according to the vocal minority, nearly max stat gear means you might as well not play at all. If it isn’t BiS then we’re all wasting our time playing. It’s the raider’s mentality. I blame WoW (of course). No one seems to care that you can see every bit of content, every boss fight, every dungeon, every single thing in this game without max stat gear. You can do all content with full Rare, you don’t even really need that! Heck, in most cases you don’t even need to be max level to do new content!

All of that is wasted on the BiS losers.

I won’t stop because I can’t stop.

It’s a medical condition, they say its terminal….

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Posted by: munkiman.3068

munkiman.3068

I’m going to put this really simply.

Other games: you literally have to grind to see new content or else your gear is not powerful enough to do the content.

GW2: Zero, none, nada need to grind to see all content in the game. Nearly max stat game is extremely easy to get.

Distorting logic that somehow you must grind because the appearance of your gear isn’t the sparkliest of them all is just a bad argument.

Other games just have a different treadmill type, sure you can’t progress through content in other games till you get the stats, but here you can’t progress through sparkles to get the armor/weapon/stat set you want. It’s just a different set of rules. Of course GW2 has both, just not at end game. Try running 80 content in 40 gear.

[TAO] Founder/Owner and Administrator for the NSP Server Website

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Posted by: Marxo.3829

Marxo.3829

I’m going to put this really simply.

Other games: you literally have to grind to see new content or else your gear is not powerful enough to do the content.

GW2: Zero, none, nada need to grind to see all content in the game. Nearly max stat game is extremely easy to get.

Distorting logic that somehow you must grind because the appearance of your gear isn’t the sparkliest of them all is just a bad argument.

Other games just have a different treadmill type, sure you can’t progress through content in other games till you get the stats, but here you can’t progress through sparkles to get the armor/weapon/stat set you want. It’s just a different set of rules. Of course GW2 has both, just not at end game. Try running 80 content in 40 gear.

It’s completely not the same thing.

How can you possibly compare a game where you can’t leave town anymore of all new content areas because you didn’t grind up the power level of your gear… to GW2 where are get to do all the new content, but maybe with your weapons being less shiny?

It’s not even a close comparison so please stop muddying the waters.

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Posted by: munkiman.3068

munkiman.3068

I’m going to put this really simply.

Other games: you literally have to grind to see new content or else your gear is not powerful enough to do the content.

GW2: Zero, none, nada need to grind to see all content in the game. Nearly max stat game is extremely easy to get.

Distorting logic that somehow you must grind because the appearance of your gear isn’t the sparkliest of them all is just a bad argument.

Other games just have a different treadmill type, sure you can’t progress through content in other games till you get the stats, but here you can’t progress through sparkles to get the armor/weapon/stat set you want. It’s just a different set of rules. Of course GW2 has both, just not at end game. Try running 80 content in 40 gear.

It’s completely not the same thing.

How can you possibly compare a game where you can’t leave town anymore of all new content areas because you didn’t grind up the power level of your gear… to GW2 where are get to do all the new content, but maybe with your weapons being less shiny?

It’s not even a close comparison so please stop muddying the waters.

Have you tried to do southsun on a level 20? How about fractals level 20 without AR gear? There’s plenty of examples. You’re not going to take a 20 to a level 40 area, etc. There are plenty of examples of the opposite as well, as you point out. No muddy water here.

It’s a different perspective, it’s an end game goal, which keeps getting moved further out by lowered drop rates and increased costs. It’s not rocket science.

Southsun provides at least a hope for a new rewarding GW2, even if it is temporary. Still t6 mats and dust are pretty out of whack.

[TAO] Founder/Owner and Administrator for the NSP Server Website

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Posted by: Draknar.5748

Draknar.5748

I’m going to put this really simply.

Other games: you literally have to grind to see new content or else your gear is not powerful enough to do the content.

GW2: Zero, none, nada need to grind to see all content in the game. Nearly max stat game is extremely easy to get.

Distorting logic that somehow you must grind because the appearance of your gear isn’t the sparkliest of them all is just a bad argument.

Other games just have a different treadmill type, sure you can’t progress through content in other games till you get the stats, but here you can’t progress through sparkles to get the armor/weapon/stat set you want. It’s just a different set of rules. Of course GW2 has both, just not at end game. Try running 80 content in 40 gear.

The treadmill implies you HAVE to constantly upgrade gear else be unable to see new content. I don’t think treadmill is the phrase you want to use to describe what GW2 is creating. Requiring a grind to get new skins isn’t really a treadmill. GW2 is breaking the typical gear grind mold and the BiS gear grinders aren’t able to wrap their heads around it.

Currently we have the casual max stat gear: Exotic. The casual hard-core player max stat gear: Ascended (of which only accessories are available). And the hard-core max stat gear (which isn’t max stat currently, but supposedly will have stats raised at some point): Legendary.

You will have a fantastic point if we see additional types of gear added after Legendary, but as it stands, it’s a stretch say that GW2 has a gear treadmill. Adding new skins without better stats isn’t a treadmill. They are just creating more aesthetic options from which to choose.

I won’t stop because I can’t stop.

It’s a medical condition, they say its terminal….

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Posted by: Marxo.3829

Marxo.3829

I’m going to put this really simply.

Other games: you literally have to grind to see new content or else your gear is not powerful enough to do the content.

GW2: Zero, none, nada need to grind to see all content in the game. Nearly max stat game is extremely easy to get.

Distorting logic that somehow you must grind because the appearance of your gear isn’t the sparkliest of them all is just a bad argument.

Other games just have a different treadmill type, sure you can’t progress through content in other games till you get the stats, but here you can’t progress through sparkles to get the armor/weapon/stat set you want. It’s just a different set of rules. Of course GW2 has both, just not at end game. Try running 80 content in 40 gear.

It’s completely not the same thing.

How can you possibly compare a game where you can’t leave town anymore of all new content areas because you didn’t grind up the power level of your gear… to GW2 where are get to do all the new content, but maybe with your weapons being less shiny?

It’s not even a close comparison so please stop muddying the waters.

Have you tried to do southsun on a level 20? How about fractals level 20 without AR gear? There’s plenty of examples. You’re not going to take a 20 to a level 40 area, etc. There are plenty of examples of the opposite as well, as you point out. No muddy water here.

It’s a different perspective, it’s an end game goal, which keeps getting moved further out by lowered drop rates and increased costs. It’s not rocket science.

Southsun provides at least a hope for a new rewarding GW2, even if it is temporary. Still t6 mats and dust are pretty out of whack.

This thread is about grinding. If you consider getting a character to max level too much of a grind where every turn of the bend along the way is fresh content, there is no hope for you.

Or is your argument that a 1-day old character should be able to jump right to hard-mode level 80 dungeons?

I think I’m done responding to you, thanks for the “great arguments”.

(edited by Marxo.3829)

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Posted by: IndigoSundown.5419

IndigoSundown.5419

And that is your fault. Farmers don’t help the economy – it’s not a matter only of supply and demand, but also a matter of concentrating wealth in the hands of a minority, together will all the impact from people who don’t really want to play the game, just exploit the game.

But the worst aspect of farmers is how they are responsible for making MMOs mediocre. ArenaNet wants people to play the game; if no one played it because PvE is bad, ArenaNet would have to either improve the game or sink. But in reality they don’t have to – they know they don’t need to actually bother making good content because there is a horde of players willing to mindlessly farm through bad content just to get a shiny reward in the end, and thus ArenaNet knows that having only “vapid PvE content” is fine as long as they slap it with 200% Magic Find.

I see your point—it’s an excellent one—and I have changed my mind accordingly. I appreciate you helping me to see the bigger picture.

Well-reasoned, Erasculio. And Guns, this may be the first time I’ve seen someone in these forums admit they changed their opinion. Kudos to both of you, along with a +1.

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Posted by: pricer.5091

pricer.5091

Someone mentioned Volcanus. Try and go from 0 to about 500g right now and see how long it takes. Because I can tell you it didnt used to take as long as it would now. I know, because I did it and now I’m trying to do it again. And it will take YEARS.

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Posted by: PinCushion.7390

PinCushion.7390


And then, on the other side, you have diminishing returns, which start becoming evident within less than 1 hour of play and you nerf farming spots whenever they’re found. I’ve done enough farming since this event started to start noticing the patterns in the DR system, and when I start “fresh”, with almost 400% MF, I find something in almost every drop. A green, a T5 material, a blue… something. Almost no junk or whites. Before an hour elapses I’m starting to find junk or nothing in most kills. This is consistent behavior. It hasn’t just happened “once” or to myself only. You sell 1 hour MF boosts ffs, and your DR kicks in before that…

This is currently the biggest problem I have with PvE right now. I don’t farm one spot for more than an hour, but I’ll often stay in the same zone for longer than that. I notice a dramatic decrease in dropped loot after about 30 minutes of consistent fighting. Is this DR? Bad luck? Who knows?

And that’s my problem. Nobody knows, and nobody can know. ANet has deemed it unsafe to let us know how this particular mechanic actually works, because “The bots might use it to bot.” I think their (mostly justified) fear of bots is responsible for most of the insane design choices they’ve implemented. After a bot-infested release they’ve gotten the problem under control. Bots aren’t gone, but they’re nowhere near as widespread as they used to be.

DR effects me every time I do PvE content. Or does it? Not informing players of what their current DR point total is, and how DR actually works, is offensive. How am I supposed to know if I’m playing the game as intended if I don’t know what the rules are? The rules seem to indicate that I need to change zones every 40 minutes and log off for every other hour. First, does this make any sense at all? Second, we’ll never know if it makes any sense because we have no idea what’s actually going on.

TL – DR: The Diminishing Returns system ruins a lot of PvE for me, not because it’s there, but because I have zero information about what’s going on with my own character. If ANet wants me to change zones or mob types every 45 minutes then they should just tell me and not make me guess.

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Posted by: KorbanDallas.7389

KorbanDallas.7389

@Erasculio.2914

Looking at it like that, any and all games require some form of grind. If I’m playing a shooting game, I have to grind my way through enemies with guns. Or maybe I’m playing a text adventure, and I have to grind my way through all that dialogue. How much is considered too much changes from person to person. If I want to make an apple pie, I have to chop up (even skin) a bunch of apples – If I do ten apples like this, someone else might proclaim “Hey, thats way too much of a grind!” and go buy an apple pie thats already made, someone else might decide it’s not enough and make a ton more.

Yes, I agree grinding is bad, considering I don’t find it that much fun, but its more a matter of HOW MUCH. The only thing that is incredibly affected by grind is the pursuit of Legendaries, which Anet flat-out told us at the start were intended to take us months, if not years to get (and they promptly changed that when people suddenly had them 1 to 2 months in and complained about having nothing to do, because obviously they didn’t make it hard enough if people were achieving 12 months of planned work in 2 months -in their minds I’m sure). Being upset at it taking a long time or grind for a legendary is like getting mad at Microsoft for not talking about games at the Xbox One reveal (when they said beforehand it wasn’t about games until E3).

As for everything else, think back to the apple pie comparison. If I want to make my armor, and I don’t have enough ectos, there are more choices than simply grinding for them. You can just buy them from the market (omg, now I have to grind for money!) or you can try getting them from destroying rares or what-have-you. I had no issues with this on my main, and I didn’t do any farming with him – heck he went from story to story quest, clearing zones as he went and had more than enough to deck himself out in gaudy dragon-themed armor, and weapons (using a combination of items found and bought from the market).

Yes, you have a completely solid point with the dungeon armor taking so many runs more than showing you understand how to do it. Would it be nice to just run each path once and then have it all automatically unlock so you can nab it for free? Sure. Of course, considering that they are all top-tier items in stats comparable to other top-tier gettables, that one then cheapen the experience of crafters, who have to go gather all these materials (or buy them) in order to make. Are the T3 cultural armors super-overpriced? Yes, without a doubt – especially given their stats. I won’t even argue that one, as it would be stupid to do so. I don’t understand why you don’t use Karma to get them in the first place, considering how cultural weapon skins are based on karma, or why they cost an absurd amount when IMO only the norn and a set or two of the other races culturals are even worth getting.

Would you really want to play the game if everything was just given to you right off the bat, with no progression and no change in gear? It might be fun for a while, but there are a lot of folks who complain about nothing to do as is, imagine how many would be saying that if everything was just given to you flat out. You technically even grind your level – you are doing the same three or four tasks all the time for XP, aren’t you?

Again, disclaimer: It’s not a personal attack or anything, just throwing some opinions back to kind of elaborate on what I was thinking.

}——————————-{
http://avsla-gw2.blogspot.com/

(edited by KorbanDallas.7389)

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Posted by: munkiman.3068

munkiman.3068

The treadmill implies you HAVE to constantly upgrade gear else be unable to see new content. I don’t think treadmill is the phrase you want to use to describe what GW2 is creating. Requiring a grind to get new skins isn’t really a treadmill. GW2 is breaking the typical gear grind mold and the BiS gear grinders aren’t able to wrap their heads around it.

Currently we have the casual max stat gear: Exotic. The casual hard-core player max stat gear: Ascended (of which only accessories are available). And the hard-core max stat gear (which isn’t max stat currently, but supposedly will have stats raised at some point): Legendary.

You will have a fantastic point if we see additional types of gear added after Legendary, but as it stands, it’s a stretch say that GW2 has a gear treadmill. Adding new skins without better stats isn’t a treadmill. They are just creating more aesthetic options from which to choose.

All I’m saying is horizontal progression can be viewed the same way. If they release new skins, those skins are often gated behind “grinding” activities, as well as new stat gear. If you want to respec your build or change your looks, you’re going to have to do a bit of grinding to do so (gold, materials, etc). It’s a treadmill of a different color, you can easily make definitions about treadmills and say they only imply a vertical progression, that’s fine, I’m not going to argue a matter of perspective.

Playing a game is a matter of choice, whether that game be horizontal or vertical progression. Plenty of people quite WoW over the endless grind to get the next tier of stuff and i wouldn’t doubt people quit GW2 over it being silly to remake/re-buy an entire set of gear just to respec or change the look.

As far as just being able to play the content without level gates, well there are plenty of games like that too. You don’t necessarily have to level or be more powerful progressively to enjoy playing a game.

[TAO] Founder/Owner and Administrator for the NSP Server Website

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Posted by: cerberus.1937

cerberus.1937

Guild Wars 2 rewards players on different play styles. The casual gamer is awarded a level 80 character and usually full exotics of the dungeon vendor variety. The more dedicated gamer is awarded level 80 character with full Exotics and ascended accessories. However the lucky gamer is awarded basically anything their hearts desire; yes its called rng for a reason but in no game should player a and player b kill the same creature and one end up 600 gold richer. Yes its a personal opinion but why make the precursor luck only; rest can be seen with gradual progression even loadstones as rarely as they drop is small but progression is progression. Its currently a system that values luck above everything else.

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Posted by: pricer.5091

pricer.5091

Its about making as much money as possible before everyone leaves. Sad but true.

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Posted by: Star Ace.5207

Star Ace.5207

I’m going to put this really simply.

Other games: you literally have to grind to see new content or else your gear is not powerful enough to do the content.

GW2: Zero, none, nada need to grind to see all content in the game. Nearly max stat gear is extremely easy to get.

Distorting logic that somehow you must grind because the appearance of your gear isn’t the sparkliest of them all is just a bad argument.

Not to mention, Legendaries are flawed for many builds, even as BiS, because not all builds benefit from a Soldier’s stats weapon (of course, it hardly matters, but min/maxers will notice-in fact, my Warrior going for the Juggernaut wasn’t only based on the skin, but also on Hammer playstyle with Soldier’s stats on the weapon in mind… Soldier’s is far from optimal for my Mesmer.)

In the end, there’s no need to see the Legendaries as GW2 raison d’etre-it CAN be for some players, but it was never intended to be the one and only way we should play GW2 (really, if the game isn’t fun already for those who only want the Legendary, what will make then think they will play more or enjoy the game better after acquiring it?)

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Posted by: pricer.5091

pricer.5091

You realise they can be transmuted right?

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Posted by: pricer.5091

pricer.5091

I’m going to put this really simply.

Other games: you literally have to grind to see new content or else your gear is not powerful enough to do the content.

GW2: Zero, none, nada need to grind to see all content in the game. Nearly max stat gear is extremely easy to get.

I’ll put this really simply, you are right, you can experience all the content in the game without the cosmetic gear. But then what do you do? Do it all again? How many times do you do that?

Till anothergame comes out?
Answer = yes

Without a purpose (advancement in power / skills or vanity items). There literally is no game. Never mind end-game.

So is this really meant to be a play-through once or maybe twice if you have an alt you can actually be bothered to level without crafting it to 80? Until the next expansion comes out maybe? Or wait, there is living story…which so far every time it was added took me less then two hours to finish and then wait a month for the next two hours worth?

Meh. Bored senseless.

(edited by pricer.5091)

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Posted by: Rama.6439

Rama.6439

Additionally you shouldn’t tell people how they play the game. Some people can only play a little every day. Others can only play a lot on select days. Forcing one method of playing the game in detriment of all the others is, again, bad design.

Maybe you shouldn’t tell how Anet should run its game then.

That’s right. They’re doing a great job at shooting themselves in the foot all by themselves. With the decisions month after month, sounds like pandemonium there. When the new MMOs hit the market, that’s when we’re gonna see how well they run their game.

Aye. I look forward to that day as well.

I so look forward to this also, they are digging a grave for this game so deep it won’t even be a memory next year.

I doubt they will have enough players to even bring out an expansion the way they have burned this game down, only reason so many are still playing it atm is it’s the only thing to play right now, as soon as something new hits this game will be history.

Arcubus Balefire – 80 Guardian
Välkyri – 80 Warrior
JQ[Lulz] – Kill fur Thrillz…

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Posted by: ltkAlpha.4136

ltkAlpha.4136

When the only way to attain that content is either through very low odds random chance and/or through attaining a gigantic laundry list of rare items, you’re forced to grind the game – regardless of how you do it.

I guess that the precise problem you (and many others) have with the game – you don’t seem to grasp an idea of acumulating these thing, through months/years of a normal playing. When mats and gold just drops in by accident, when you’re doing something that is fun to you. And the legendary is not to be focused, it’s something to be earned after a long long time of playing, aside from the fun you take from a game.

You might of course not agree to this philosophy, and most likely you won’t, but it’s not a game design’s problem. It’s you and your attitude. Apparently, you chose a wrong game to play.

EDIT: Focusing-too-much seems to be a problem in general gaming nowadays. Is there anyone who play their games purely for fun yet?

I disagree. People want to be adequate, people want to belong. In a game where people are allowed to make 7g/hour (CoF1), where a significant core of people play full time and work the TP to a degree where hundreds of gold per precursor is a sensible market price, there will be expectations. I play on an EU server and this weekend my guild was assembling for guild activities in Lions Arch. There were about a dozen guildies there and there were 3 legendaries on display, and it’s is not even a hardcore guild. People do (and always will) take the path of least resisitance towards their goal.

Again, this sets expectations. I myself am as casual as they get (I hate grind in any form with a passion), but I’m left with the impression that exotics are a base requirement – profession and build aside, you don’t want to slow people down, they don’t want you to slow them down. So, exotic gear is a minimal requirement if you want dungeon skins. And for that you need gold – a full exotic set of popular gear can starts around 50 gold . You need gold to make gold (it’s effing absurd). I mean, FFS, people in my guild are looking for people for FotM lvl 45+ (!). I’ve had the game since release (admittedly, with a long break) and I haven’t been to the place even once yet.

There’s nothing complicated to grasp, we’re not discussing a mathematical theorem. I do my best to have fun, I level alts and roam the maps doing everything, but guild chat is not about that, people obviously set themselves loftier goals and every time I look up prices on the TP I realize that my style of play just isn’t competitive in that regard. Playing like that and looking around at the skins people wear I realize I’m essentially the GW2 equivalent of a bum. There’s the status quo, there’s inflation and there’s a perception of expectation. And the fact that you can’t acknowledge that can stem only from ignorance, lack of empathy, arrogance or all of those combined.

edit:
tl; dr: You can’t disregard human nature when discussing game design. You might as well disregard human physiology.

(edited by ltkAlpha.4136)

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Posted by: Erasculio.2914

Erasculio.2914

Looking at it like that, any and all games require some form of grind. If I’m playing a shooting game, I have to grind my way through enemies with guns. Or maybe I’m playing a text adventure, and I have to grind my way through all that dialogue.

I disagree with you. In a shooting game, the goal is to shoot enemies – if you don’t think that is fun, you would simply not play the game. In the text adventure, the goal is to read the dialogue – if you don’t think it’s fun, you would not play the game.

Same thing with eating an apple pie. If you like apple pie, you would be happy eating one; if you don’t like apple pie, you would not eat it, period.

MMOs don’t work that way. For many players, the MMO is about getting rewards through content that is not fun. See the popularity of the old “kill ten rats” quests – I doubt someone would say the goal of a game was to kill a given number of all enemies in the map. But people did exactly that in order to get the reward for it.

It’s like someone being told, “I know you hate apple pie, but if you eat 100 of them, I will pay you one hundred dolars”.

Thanks to MMORPGs, and to the players who accept them, the focus of many games are switching from the experience (I eat pie because I like apple pie) to the reward (I hate apple pie, but I will eat it because I will get paid for doing so). It’s absurd that people are willing to accept this, especially for something as irrelevant as rewards in a game, but that’s what people want, and so that’s what MMO developers are offering them.

“I think that players are starting to mature past the point of wanting to be on that
treadmill, of being in that obvious pattern of every time I catch up you are going to
put another carrot in front of me” – Mike O’Brien right before Ascended weapons

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Posted by: Black Regent.5897

Black Regent.5897

I just want to say I agree 110% with the OP. ANET, you either want a grindy game or you don’t, but you need to make a decision and stick with it. I’m beyond tired of getting jerked around on this point with the nerfs and the design decisions.

If you’re going to make key components of the game grind-based, then stop punishing people for grinding. If you don’t want people to find ways to grind, then don’t make key components of the game grind dependent.

Personally, for me, it’s a moot point. You’ve successfully broken my spirit on the matter and I quit. But for others, I would implore you… make up your godkitten minds and stop jerking people around on it.

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Posted by: Star Ace.5207

Star Ace.5207

You realise they can be transmuted right?

Unfortunately, transmuting then kills their Legendary, BiS status-they would become an Exotic with Legendary guise, which IMHO, is a big waste of all time spent acquiring it, especially if BiS ever gets higher stats for weapons (unless they changed something in an update I didn’t know about.) Don’t take me wrong, I actually don’t want Legendaries to have higher stats (it’s too hard to get a Legendary for most players, so getting these higher stats would be too difficult or time consuming for most-I would ignore BiS under those conditions myself) but they might, and having an Exotic that only will look like a BiS Legendary will be sad then.

As far as human nature goes, I live my life without caring about what people think of me, by my own code and values, so if I do this in real life, many others will also do it in a game. The Legendary grind is entirely optional, and no one needs one (nice to have, yes… needed, no-don’t let people decide for you how you should lead your life in or out if the game.) I am 100% sure that ANet will make it so even if it has higher higher stats over time, those can be ignored and will never be required for any relevant content-in shirt, people think they need that stuff to “belong”, but we do not need to if we are happy with ourselves and our choices.

“Belonging” is overrated-living your own way sounds just right to me instead (feel free to disagree, , of course.)

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Posted by: tolunart.2095

tolunart.2095

Someone mentioned Volcanus. Try and go from 0 to about 500g right now and see how long it takes. Because I can tell you it didnt used to take as long as it would now. I know, because I did it and now I’m trying to do it again. And it will take YEARS.

Saturday morning Dusk dropped for me. 0 gold to 600 in two seconds.

Or the long way around… I average 1.5 rares per meta-event “boss” chest, plus the 1 rare/exotic bonus chest. They sell for an average of 25 silver, so 2.5 × 25 = 62.5 silver per event. Do seven events (four lower level areas, Claw, Shatter, Teq) and that’s 437.5 silver per day just from selling the rares. You get a bit of change from the other stuff that drops, plus an occasional exotic, so say you make 5 gold a day this way. That’s 35 gold a week.

Invest the gold in the trading post. Hey, it’s not hard to learn how to flip stuff, you can easily double your money every week. Week 2 you make 70 gold from the tp + 35 from events. Week 3 is previous week (105 gold) doubled + 35 = 245. Then week 4 is 525 gold.

You can easily make 500 gold in a month. That’s not even farming, or roaming the world doing stuff, it’s just standing around at various events autoattacking for 5-15 minutes each. Sometime I arrive for the last 30 seconds of the fight and still get the chests.

My drops are nothing special, average for someone who plays the game a few hours a day. If you are so focused on making money, LEARN how to do it instead of spending all your time here arguing that Anet should hand you everything on a silver platter.

(edited by tolunart.2095)

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Posted by: Kreslin.6832

Kreslin.6832

You can easily make 500 gold in a month. That’s not even farming, or roaming the world doing stuff, it’s just standing around at various events autoattacking for 5-15 minutes each. Sometime I arrive for the last 30 seconds of the fight and still get the chests.

That’s really, really stupid, not interesting, other way around, extremely boring.

Anet should hand you everything on a silver platter.

It’s not about silver platter. It’s about entertainment. For now we have only two options to make money.

1. Farm dungeons.
2. Doing meta events, world bosses.

It is so boring, so… we had such options in other mmorpg. So why don’t Anet make more entertaining and relaxing ways for making money?

For example mini games. We can play mini games and earn money. For me it’s more entertaining and more relaxing than stupid world bosses, or dungeon farm/doing meta events.

Seize the day.

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Posted by: tolunart.2095

tolunart.2095

You can easily make 500 gold in a month. That’s not even farming, or roaming the world doing stuff, it’s just standing around at various events autoattacking for 5-15 minutes each. Sometime I arrive for the last 30 seconds of the fight and still get the chests.

That’s really, really stupid, not interesting, other way around, extremely boring.

Yes, it is. But if you’re interested in entertaining yourself, why worry about money?

I’m saving up the 30 gold listing fee to sell Dusk. I started with about 2 silver in the bank, five days later I have over 20 gold. I got the money effortlessly and while I don’t particularly find the process “fun,” I have a goal and I am doing what is necessary to achieve that goal.

For the most part, I spend money as fast as I get it and just play the game without worrying about it. Loot falls from the sky here, and whenever I need to save up a few gold I just go out and get it.

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Posted by: Vayne.8563

Vayne.8563

I’m going to put this really simply.

Other games: you literally have to grind to see new content or else your gear is not powerful enough to do the content.

GW2: Zero, none, nada need to grind to see all content in the game. Nearly max stat game is extremely easy to get.

Distorting logic that somehow you must grind because the appearance of your gear isn’t the sparkliest of them all is just a bad argument.

Other games just have a different treadmill type, sure you can’t progress through content in other games till you get the stats, but here you can’t progress through sparkles to get the armor/weapon/stat set you want. It’s just a different set of rules. Of course GW2 has both, just not at end game. Try running 80 content in 40 gear.

It’s completely not the same thing.

How can you possibly compare a game where you can’t leave town anymore of all new content areas because you didn’t grind up the power level of your gear… to GW2 where are get to do all the new content, but maybe with your weapons being less shiny?

It’s not even a close comparison so please stop muddying the waters.

Have you tried to do southsun on a level 20? How about fractals level 20 without AR gear? There’s plenty of examples. You’re not going to take a 20 to a level 40 area, etc. There are plenty of examples of the opposite as well, as you point out. No muddy water here.

It’s a different perspective, it’s an end game goal, which keeps getting moved further out by lowered drop rates and increased costs. It’s not rocket science.

Southsun provides at least a hope for a new rewarding GW2, even if it is temporary. Still t6 mats and dust are pretty out of whack.

Of course you can’t do Fractal level 20 without AR gear. But the gear you need is found in the fractals itself. You’re not farming the fractals to get to the next dungeon. That’s the difference. The fractals are completely self contained. If you do 10 days of dailies in a row at level 10, you get a ring. So in 20 days of dailies, you can have two rings. You should have enough for a backpiece by then too. So you can to your 20th level fractals without ever leaving the fractal.

More to the point, 20th level fractals is different than other games because players can’t SEE the content at all without gear. For non-competitive PvE types, they can play every single fractal, over and over again if they want, on level 1. They can see all 9 fractals. It’s disingenuous to say they can’t see a fractal level 20. It’s just a variation on a theme. If they want to see it they certainly can. But many people want to just see them a couple of times. and be done with it and you can do that here. You can’t in other games.

A treadmill implies multiple steps not one. At least for or five tiers of gear, not one tier of gear. So yeah, it’s not a treadmill.

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Posted by: Astralporing.1957

Astralporing.1957

They didn’t abandon anything. it’s STILL different from other games. You’re not locked out of doing content by not having specific ascended gear. You can do it all with exotics without any problem at all. The only exception being the fractals and that’s self-sustaining since the stuff you need to higher level fractals actually drops in the fractals.

It doesn’t. Or at least i haven’t seen any amulets and earrings there yet. Perhaps you did, though, since you keep repeating this misinformation over and over.

Actions, not words.
Remember, remember, 15th of November

(edited by Astralporing.1957)

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Posted by: Vayne.8563

Vayne.8563

They didn’t abandon anything. it’s STILL different from other games. You’re not locked out of doing content by not having specific ascended gear. You can do it all with exotics without any problem at all. The only exception being the fractals and that’s self-sustaining since the stuff you need to higher level fractals actually drops in the fractals.

It doesn’t. Or at least i haven’t seen any amulets and earrings there yet. Perhaps you did, though, since you keep repeating this misinformation over and over.

You might learn the difference between misinformation and lack of understanding on your part.

The Fractals existed BEFORE ascended amulets existed and BEFORE ascended earrings existed (and people were doing them).

Can you push the fractal level higher than say 38 without going to these other items? Probably not.

Can you get ALL the rewards you could possibly get from fractals without pushing that high. Yes you can.

A difference that makes no difference is no difference. If you want to go higher in the Fractals you’re not experiencing different content. You’re experiencing a harder level of the same content, which is fine. You can do that if you want. This is the very reason fractals were designed. To give grinders and gear grinders something to do.

But everyone else, the non-gear grinds, the BULK of the population can do all 9 Fractals without a single piece of ascended gear, and they can go quite high in the fractals without ever getting either an amulet or earrings.

(edited by Vayne.8563)

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Posted by: Kreslin.6832

Kreslin.6832

You can easily make 500 gold in a month. That’s not even farming, or roaming the world doing stuff, it’s just standing around at various events autoattacking for 5-15 minutes each. Sometime I arrive for the last 30 seconds of the fight and still get the chests.

That’s really, really stupid, not interesting, other way around, extremely boring.

Yes, it is. But if you’re interested in entertaining yourself, why worry about money?

I’m saving up the 30 gold listing fee to sell Dusk. I started with about 2 silver in the bank, five days later I have over 20 gold. I got the money effortlessly and while I don’t particularly find the process “fun,” I have a goal and I am doing what is necessary to achieve that goal.

For the most part, I spend money as fast as I get it and just play the game without worrying about it. Loot falls from the sky here, and whenever I need to save up a few gold I just go out and get it.

Face-palm. Okay, never mind.

Seize the day.

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Posted by: redgabber.5209

redgabber.5209

+1 i agree with the op

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Posted by: Recluse.6740

Recluse.6740

whoever says that most part of getting a legendary is playing the game normally except for lodestone, i want to know how normally playing you can get 750 pile of crystalline dust to craft bifrost…
because in my normal gameplay i managed to have 100ish and this when loot and farming weren’t nerfed…
after the nerf i had to buy all of it and/or had it from friends

But you’ve made gold and you can buy mats. That’s what most people do. Most people don’t farm all the mats they need themselves. They play the game however they want, slowly building up the money they need to buy the mats they want. They keep an eye on the prices of mats, because they do fluctuate, and they try to buy when the price is lower.

So some people love dungeons and run them for money. Or Fractals. Some people hate them and just run dynamic events, which takes longer, but they do it anyway. Some people follow the world events around and make money doing that.

I do a bit of everything and though I didn’t need 750 crystalline dust for my lengendary, I did need 100 onyx lodestones, which by today’s prices works out to roughly the same price. And Crystalline dust has gone up. It’ll go down again after the Southsun event when more people are farming in Orr.

The point is, you don’t have to farm the mats, you just play the game, save your gold, and buy your mats. That’s what I did.

I am trying to make sense of all of your posts in this thread, but I am soooo confused.

You are telling people to slow down and play for fun, and that legendary weapons were meant to be “Ultra long term goals”, yet you have 3000 hours played by your admission, and a legendary already.

Its pretty easy to tell other people to relax and just play the game, when you are already afforded that luxury due to you achieving your "Ultra long term goal’ already. While others who either do not have your luck, your time, or your playing prowess want to achieve the same thing you have done already.

You are like the guy who quits smoking, then preaches to other people they should quit, and its easy. No one wants to hear it to be honest.

If half of these people had their legendary already, you would not see them in here complaining, unless of course it was about the lack of endgame/content.

I am happy you achieved your goal, and you did it YOUR way, but that does not give you the right to come in here and tell people THEIR way is wrong just because it is different than yours.

I am one of the players who enjoys mindless grinds ( Job is mentally tasking, and coming home to a mindless activity is nice) , and getting rewarded for spending my time doing what I find fun. I enjoy talking to my friends while grinding, and maybe listening to music while doing so, point is … to me, while I do enjoy the content Anet has put in the game, and I have tried most of it, farming is my bread and butter, and the content I find the most rewarding.

The good thing is that whenever Anet shuts down a farming spot, another one opens, so I will not freak out about losing skelks. I moved on from skelks a while ago, and making my money elsewhere, but as I see people moving in on that as well now, I know I need to start looking for another spot again. So I will .. and I will continue to play the game the way I want, as you so did it your way.

On inconsistent and paradoxical game design

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: KorbanDallas.7389

KorbanDallas.7389

[quote=2162573;Erasculio.2914:
Thanks to MMORPGs, and to the players who accept them, the focus of many games are switching from the experience (I eat pie because I like apple pie) to the reward (I hate apple pie, but I will eat it because I will get paid for doing so). It’s absurd that people are willing to accept this, especially for something as irrelevant as rewards in a game, but that’s what people want, and so that’s what MMO developers are offering them.[/quote]

I think that final experience you mention is coming from the generation of players more than it is MMORPGs – and the reason I say this is because there are a lot of people out there that (as far as games go) demand the instant satisfaction of something like Call of Duty over the long-term of something like Lost Odyssey. People go into everything with specific expectations, and those expectations are what cause us to end up in situations like this – admittedly back when, Anet did say roughly that there’s gonna be no grind in this game, of which there is if you choose to go about the tasks that require it – in comparison to other MMO’s however, it’s a very limited amount of grinding (some folks have used the raid-got gear from WoW as an example). Sure, there are certainly better ways to do it, but it’s very rare that a game after being released completely rewrites what it’s doing.

Another example about that is what happened with Mass Effect 3. People enjoyed 90 % of that game, and when they got to the last 10 %, they suddenly hated ALL of the game, demanding money back and trying to sue over false advertising because it wasn’t what THEY wanted it to end as (Not that I particularly think it ended well, but whatever I didn’t make the game, why should I have a say in the specific details about the ending). They then completely ignored the entire experience they had from the start of the game and just ruled it as bad – something we see here too, with discussions about how there are “no endgame” and blahblah.

It’s not so much that I’m trying to defend the game, or that I’m trying to side with complaints, it’s just sometimes I feel the players are starting to get uppity about something – some aspect – that they personally don’t like, and let it ruin the entire experience for them. Example: People complain about RNG drops, and therefore the entire game is just absolutely terrible – and yet then they might love something like Borderlands, which is nothing but RNG drops. They get focused so much on this one mechanic that all of a sudden they can’t have fun – and the biggest part of a MMO to me, is the fun you create for yourself by playing with people (otherwise I wouldn’t need to be online). Even with RNG, you and some friends can get together, have fun, and just kitten around (even with a task like farming) while enjoying yourselves – but some people focus so much on only that RNG that they subconsciously don’t want to have fun anymore it feels.

As for the shooter bit – the CoD crowd I will agree they only play a shooter for the shooting. There’s a lot of games out there that happen to be shooters that (at least personally) get played for the story/setting (Colonial Marines, for example). If we swing back to ME3, and think about all the people who played it for story instead of mechanics, could we not consider having to roam all those planets, shooting all those critters to be a grind? Could be to some, although I’m sure others love it – and that’s what I was trying to elaborate there is that “Too much grind” is very subjective from person to person.

}——————————-{
http://avsla-gw2.blogspot.com/

On inconsistent and paradoxical game design

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: TooBz.3065

TooBz.3065

You can easily make 500 gold in a month. That’s not even farming, or roaming the world doing stuff, it’s just standing around at various events autoattacking for 5-15 minutes each. Sometime I arrive for the last 30 seconds of the fight and still get the chests.

That’s really, really stupid, not interesting, other way around, extremely boring.

Yes, it is. But if you’re interested in entertaining yourself, why worry about money?

I’m saving up the 30 gold listing fee to sell Dusk. I started with about 2 silver in the bank, five days later I have over 20 gold. I got the money effortlessly and while I don’t particularly find the process “fun,” I have a goal and I am doing what is necessary to achieve that goal.

For the most part, I spend money as fast as I get it and just play the game without worrying about it. Loot falls from the sky here, and whenever I need to save up a few gold I just go out and get it.

Normally I agree with almost everything you say, but here you lost me at saving up to sell Disk. If you have a Dusk to sell then you aren’t in the same class with most people who are complaining about the grind (unless, or course, you saved up the money to buy it in the first place.).

Legendary weapons aside, money will never again be a problem for you in this game. You will be able to buy whatever you want, whenever you want. The problem is that many people aren’t lucky like that.

Anything I post is just the opinion of a very vocal minority of 1.

(edited by TooBz.3065)

On inconsistent and paradoxical game design

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Vayne.8563

Vayne.8563

whoever says that most part of getting a legendary is playing the game normally except for lodestone, i want to know how normally playing you can get 750 pile of crystalline dust to craft bifrost…
because in my normal gameplay i managed to have 100ish and this when loot and farming weren’t nerfed…
after the nerf i had to buy all of it and/or had it from friends

But you’ve made gold and you can buy mats. That’s what most people do. Most people don’t farm all the mats they need themselves. They play the game however they want, slowly building up the money they need to buy the mats they want. They keep an eye on the prices of mats, because they do fluctuate, and they try to buy when the price is lower.

So some people love dungeons and run them for money. Or Fractals. Some people hate them and just run dynamic events, which takes longer, but they do it anyway. Some people follow the world events around and make money doing that.

I do a bit of everything and though I didn’t need 750 crystalline dust for my lengendary, I did need 100 onyx lodestones, which by today’s prices works out to roughly the same price. And Crystalline dust has gone up. It’ll go down again after the Southsun event when more people are farming in Orr.

The point is, you don’t have to farm the mats, you just play the game, save your gold, and buy your mats. That’s what I did.

I am trying to make sense of all of your posts in this thread, but I am soooo confused.

You are telling people to slow down and play for fun, and that legendary weapons were meant to be “Ultra long term goals”, yet you have 3000 hours played by your admission, and a legendary already.

Its pretty easy to tell other people to relax and just play the game, when you are already afforded that luxury due to you achieving your "Ultra long term goal’ already. While others who either do not have your luck, your time, or your playing prowess want to achieve the same thing you have done already.

You are like the guy who quits smoking, then preaches to other people they should quit, and its easy. No one wants to hear it to be honest.

If half of these people had their legendary already, you would not see them in here complaining, unless of course it was about the lack of endgame/content.

I am happy you achieved your goal, and you did it YOUR way, but that does not give you the right to come in here and tell people THEIR way is wrong just because it is different than yours.

I am one of the players who enjoys mindless grinds ( Job is mentally tasking, and coming home to a mindless activity is nice) , and getting rewarded for spending my time doing what I find fun. I enjoy talking to my friends while grinding, and maybe listening to music while doing so, point is … to me, while I do enjoy the content Anet has put in the game, and I have tried most of it, farming is my bread and butter, and the content I find the most rewarding.

The good thing is that whenever Anet shuts down a farming spot, another one opens, so I will not freak out about losing skelks. I moved on from skelks a while ago, and making my money elsewhere, but as I see people moving in on that as well now, I know I need to start looking for another spot again. So I will .. and I will continue to play the game the way I want, as you so did it your way.

If I didn’t have my legendary, I wouldn’t have it. I have 3000 hours in game due to the fact that I enjoy playing the game. I wasn’t even TRYING for a legendary until the precusor dropped. But my point in the same. I didn’t run CoF path 1 to get it…occassionally with the guild, never twice on the same day. I didn’t farm Orr to get it..occassionally I’d go there if I needed like omnom berries to make bars. I never farmed any area over and over. Honestly it would bore my senseless.

I’ve spent a lot of time in lower zones, hanging out with and helping guildies. Done some PvP, some PvE. In no game do I ever focus on loot. I see no reason to. I think the focus on loot has ruined the RPG genre completely and made it something it was never supposed to be.

Do you know what you are in WoW when you’re all geared up? A coatrack for greatness. I never wanted to be that. I want to be powerful, I don’t want my armor to be powerful. I don’t want to put on a coat to be awesome. The coat isn’t me.

So yeah, even if I didn’t have a legendary, none of what I said would have changed. I didn’t buy it, I didn’t farm it. I got it by playing. And if it took me two years…it would take me two years. Why should I care. I’m having fun.

People who aren’t having fun should play a game where they can have fun. I would think that would be self-evident. Maybe I’m wrong.

On inconsistent and paradoxical game design

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Aeonblade.8709

Aeonblade.8709

If I didn’t have my legendary, I wouldn’t have it. I have 3000 hours in game due to the fact that I enjoy playing the game. I wasn’t even TRYING for a legendary until the precusor dropped. But my point in the same. I didn’t run CoF path 1 to get it…occassionally with the guild, never twice on the same day. I didn’t farm Orr to get it..occassionally I’d go there if I needed like omnom berries to make bars. I never farmed any area over and over. Honestly it would bore my senseless.

I’ve spent a lot of time in lower zones, hanging out with and helping guildies. Done some PvP, some PvE. In no game do I ever focus on loot. I see no reason to. I think the focus on loot has ruined the RPG genre completely and made it something it was never supposed to be.

Do you know what you are in WoW when you’re all geared up? A coatrack for greatness. I never wanted to be that. I want to be powerful, I don’t want my armor to be powerful. I don’t want to put on a coat to be awesome. The coat isn’t me.

So yeah, even if I didn’t have a legendary, none of what I said would have changed. I didn’t buy it, I didn’t farm it. I got it by playing. And if it took me two years…it would take me two years. Why should I care. I’m having fun.

People who aren’t having fun should play a game where they can have fun. I would think that would be self-evident. Maybe I’m wrong.

Another “I don’t think you understand the game” or “Should play a different game” post. Please, keep on, don’t let us interrupt your 24/7 soap box. 3000 hours played and wonders why everyone else is complaining about the game. Priceless.

Being able to have goals in the game wouldn’t hurt players like you. You can keep on wandering around low level zones not worrying about a thing. You could keep on picking flowers for 3000 hours or whatever it is you do. It would just give the rest of a us a full game to play.

Anarai Aeonblade [GASM] – Guardian – DB
RIP my fair Engi and Ranger, you will be missed.

On inconsistent and paradoxical game design

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Vayne.8563

Vayne.8563

If I didn’t have my legendary, I wouldn’t have it. I have 3000 hours in game due to the fact that I enjoy playing the game. I wasn’t even TRYING for a legendary until the precusor dropped. But my point in the same. I didn’t run CoF path 1 to get it…occassionally with the guild, never twice on the same day. I didn’t farm Orr to get it..occassionally I’d go there if I needed like omnom berries to make bars. I never farmed any area over and over. Honestly it would bore my senseless.

I’ve spent a lot of time in lower zones, hanging out with and helping guildies. Done some PvP, some PvE. In no game do I ever focus on loot. I see no reason to. I think the focus on loot has ruined the RPG genre completely and made it something it was never supposed to be.

Do you know what you are in WoW when you’re all geared up? A coatrack for greatness. I never wanted to be that. I want to be powerful, I don’t want my armor to be powerful. I don’t want to put on a coat to be awesome. The coat isn’t me.

So yeah, even if I didn’t have a legendary, none of what I said would have changed. I didn’t buy it, I didn’t farm it. I got it by playing. And if it took me two years…it would take me two years. Why should I care. I’m having fun.

People who aren’t having fun should play a game where they can have fun. I would think that would be self-evident. Maybe I’m wrong.

Another “I don’t think you understand the game” or “Should play a different game” post. Please, keep on, don’t let us interrupt your 24/7 soap box. 3000 hours played and wonders why everyone else is complaining about the game. Priceless.

Being able to have goals in the game wouldn’t hurt players like you. You can keep on wandering around low level zones not worrying about a thing. You could keep on picking flowers for 3000 hours or whatever it is you do. It would just give the rest of a us a full game to play.

I’ve played every game like this for years, even when I’ve had no time to play. I just don’t see what the big rush is. Maybe it’s an age thing. Maybe younger people need everything faster, because the world has spread up, but I’m quite happy to take my time.

This has nothing to do with how many hours I’ve played.